They're back! It's Winter Olympics time, and we are so very
ready. We were born in February, and have a familial lineage that traces back
to the Norsemen. Snow is in our veins, and while we enjoy the sweaty bodies of
the Summer Olympians as much as anyone, it's the Winter Olympics that get our
hearts pumping. For the next 18 days it will be nonstop Olympians competing in
some of the most dangerous and death-defying sports that test the body's
endurance and abilities. Other than the high dive and gymnastics, there isn't
much risk involved in the Summer Olympics.

Be prepared to watch extreme sports on snow and on ice.
There are ski jumps where competitors are literally flying through the air. Rather
than landing in water, as with a high dive, they're landing on the ground, hopefully
in one piece. Skiing freestyle and cross-country, snowboarding, luge (most
terrifying sport ever), figure- and speed-skating, biathlon, ice hockey and
that most bizarre yet compelling (and not at all death-defying) precision team
sport, curling. These are the sports that demand the most a body is capable of,
and require not just skill and training, but nerves of absolute steel. The Winter
Olympics are thrilling, and you are going to want to watch.

It's gonna be all TV, all the time. The Olympic Games return
to NBC with a record-high 2,400 hours (!) of live coverage airing across the
networks and digital platforms of NBCUniversal.

The highly anticipated XXIII Olympic Winter Games kick off
from PyeongChang, South Korea on Thurs., Feb. 8, the day before the Opening
Ceremony, and will conclude with the Closing Ceremony on Sun., Feb. 25. The
complete schedule of competition and TV listings are available at
NBCOlympics.com.

NBC's live coverage includes daytime coverage, airing from
3-5 p.m. ET on weekdays, and 3-6 p.m. ET on weekends across all time zones.
Primetime coverage will air at 8 p.m. ET each night, and 7 p.m. ET on Sundays.
Primetime Plus coverage will air during the late-night window following
Primetime.

NBCSN will present 369 hours of coverage, including live
primetime and 10 days of 24-hour coverage from Feb. 18-25. The PyeongChang
Games officially begin on NBCSN on Wed., Feb. 7, 11 p.m. ET, with live coverage
of mixed doubles curling.

NBC's USA Network will present 40.5 hours of ice hockey and
curling coverage, most of which will air live between 7-9:30 a.m. ET. Coverage
begins on Sat., Feb. 10, with a live presentation of the Women's hockey
qualifying round, which is going to be amazing.

NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app will combine to
present more than 1,800 hours of streaming coverage, including live streaming
of all NBC network Primetime broadcasts. The site will also provide additional
Olympic content including exclusive video coverage, extensive video highlights,
and three digital-only programs: Gold Zone, Olympic Ice,
and Off the Post.

For ultra-enthusiasts like us, for the first time, NBC
Olympics will provide more than 50 hours of live virtual-reality coverage
powered by Intel True VR during the Games to authenticated users with Windows
Mixed Reality headsets, Samsung Gear VR, and both Google Cardboard and Google
Daydream, with compatible iOS or Android devices via the NBC Sports VR app. It
will mark the first time that VR will be available for a Winter Olympics, and
that Olympic VR programming will be live in the U.S. on a wide range of devices
and platforms.

There are myriad athletes to watch, but we'll be rooting for
certain ones. Erin Jackson, 25, became the first black speedskater to qualify
for the long track in 2018. Jackson became only the third black athlete to make
a U.S. Olympic speedskating team, and the first black woman to qualify for the
long-track competition.

There will also be a couple of out gay U.S. athletes to
watch for the first time, and there will be a record eight out gay and lesbian
athletes competing at the Winter Games: three men, five women.

Figure skater Adam Rippon, 28, the first openly gay man to
qualify for the Winter Olympics, was selected for the U.S. figure-skating team
on Jan. 7. Having earned a spot on the U.S. Ski Team Jan. 21, Gus Kenworthy is
the second openly gay man who will compete for the U.S. Kenworthy, 26, placed
second at the final Olympic qualifier for freeski slopestyle, according to NBC.
This is exciting news. Previously, figure skater Johnny Weir competed in the
Winter Olympics, but was not out at the time. (He has since flamed his way out
of the closet with flamboyant abandon.) Another gay athlete, luger John Fennell,
had hoped to compete, but didn't make the cut.

Rippon has already been outspoken about the Trump
Administration's choice of Vice President Mike Pence to lead the U.S. Olympic
delegation. In an interview with USA Today last month, Rippon said, "You
mean Mike Pence, the same Mike Pence who funded gay conversion therapy? I'm not
buying it."

Rippon told USA Today, "If it were before my event, I
would absolutely not go out of my way to meet somebody who I felt has gone out
of their way to not only show that they aren't a friend of a gay person but
that they think that they're sick," Rippon said. "I wouldn't go out
of my way to meet somebody like that."

Rippon, who has said he was bullied badly for being gay in
Scranton, PA, said of Pence, "I don't think he has a real concept of reality.
To stand by some of the things that Donald Trump has said and for Mike Pence to
say he's a devout Christian man is completely contradictory.
If he's okay with what's being said about people,
Americans and foreigners, and about different countries that are being called 'shitholes,'
I think he should really go to church."

Rippon said he will not go to the White House post-Games.
Lindsey Vonn has also said she would not go to Trump's White House.

There are no openly lesbian athletes from the U.S. this
year, but there are some from other countries, notably the Netherlands' Cheryl
Maas. At Sochi, after Vladimir Putin proclaimed there could be no expressions
of homosexuality because "of the children," Mass gave a snowboarding
salute to LGBTQ folks in protest to Putin, holding up her gloves, covered in
rainbows and unicorns, in view of the cameras after a run. Maas is married to
former Olympic snowboarder Stine Brun Kjedlaas, and the couple has two
children. This will be Maas' third Olympics.

Austria's Daniela Iraschko-Stolz won the silver in Sochi in
2014 for ski jumping, becoming the second openly gay athlete to medal in
Russia. Before heading to the 2014 Olympics, she married her partner Isabel
Stolz, telling the Kurier newspaper at the time, "I don't want to hide
myself. I never cared at all what other people think about me."

Snowboarder Belle Brockhoff and cross-country skier Barbara
Jezersek both qualified to represent Australia. Brockhoff came out as a lesbian
in 2013, a year before competing in the Sochi Winter Games. At the time she was
vocally critical of Russia's anti-gay laws, telling BBC Sports, "I'm not
afraid of these laws, and I want others that live in Russia who are homosexuals
to see that."

Brockhoff was also one of 27 athletes to sign a letter
opposing Kazakhstan as a host nation for the 2022 Winter Olympics because of
the country's anti-LGBT policies.

Way gay

The two gayest shows on TV right now are also the most
compelling: "American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni
Versace" and "The Alienist." Alas, both shows are vivid, painful
evocations of the horrors of homophobia.

There was such deep poignancy in the Jan. 31 episode of
"Versace," which focused on Andrew Cunanan's (Darren Criss) murder of
real estate magnate Lee Miglin, that it was painful to watch. The episode
belongs to the brilliant Judith Light, who gives an Emmy-winning performance as
Marilyn, the wife who has spent decades pretending her husband isn't gay
because he, too, was pretending right along with her. Until Cunanan exposed the
lie.

Lee is so conflicted and deeply self-loathing, he has his
own chapel deep in the basement of the couple's swank townhouse. As played by
Mike Farrell ("M*A*S*H") in a beautiful, haunting performance, Lee is
the picture of yearning. He loves his wife. They go to bed together at night
holding hands, she de-nuded of her excessive make-up, yet with a touch of
perfume, because she remains hopeful of intimacy. He aches to be in the arms of
another man, to feel the kind of kiss the young, beautiful and virile Cunanan, the
paid escort he tragically chooses, offers. The tragedy of the closet is so
vividly depicted in this episode it takes one's breath away.

Lee, like other older married men Cunanan targeted, is so
starved for male companionship he's willing to follow Cunanan's lead, not
knowing the seething brutality Cunanan feels for his own sexuality. Lee allows
Cunanan to lure him to the garage, tape his face and head, remove his hearing
aid. He wants to experience the senses that Cunanan has awakened in him, not
realizing where it will lead.

Ryan Murphy doesn't play with his audience in
"Versace." We aren't treated to some facile explanation of the
tortured reasons why Cunanan does what he does. Instead we see him as he was:
beautiful, seductive, conniving, and above all, dangerous. Cunanan lacks all
empathy for his victims, and kills with impunity to get what he wants. It doesn't
matter that any of it would be given to him freely, he needs to take it and
leave no trace. That all of his victims except Versace put themselves in his
path with their closeted desire is the contrapuntal melody in this chilling
orchestration.

TNT's new series "The Alienist," based on the
best-selling novel by Caleb Carr, taps some of the same undercurrent as
"Versace," but from a century earlier. Psychology is a newly created
(1879), not well-established science in 1896 when "The Alienist"
opens. Mental illness is still a vastly misunderstood terrain when the
alienists, those who study the mentally ill, are operating in New York City.

A series of gruesome murders of boy prostitutes has gripped
the city. Newly appointed police commissioner Teddy Roosevelt calls upon Dr.
Laszlo Kreizler (Daniel Bruehl) and newspaper illustrator John Moore (Luke
Evans) to conduct the investigation in secret. Joining them in the probe is Sara
Howard (Dakota Fanning), secretary to the police commissioner, as well as Jewish
twin brothers Marcus and Lucius Isaacson, both detective sergeants in the NYPD.

"The Alienist" is both sumptuous period piece and
shocking expose. Scenes of the madhouses are horrifying, as is the way the
"boy whores" are paraded like meat, with only the choicest bits
making the cut. Complicating the action is that the term homosexuality is
itself new, having just been devised in 1892, as is situating
"homosexuality" within the newly created field of psychology.

Bruehl is superb as Kreizler, devoted to his work and to
peeling back the layers of the human psyche to discover whatever depravity lies
beneath. Evans evokes the barely restrained emotive character of Moore, as he
and Kreizler delve deeper into the crimes. Fanning is dogged and ethereal as
she attempts to make a place for herself in this male world. "The
Alienist" is compelling: part thriller, part documentary, part horror
story, it lures the viewer and holds us there.

Out gay actor Luke Evans makes this series even more
compelling. In 2002, when he was only 23, Evans said of his sexuality,
"Everybody knew me as a gay man, and in my life in London I never tried to
hide it," and that by being open he would not have "that skeleton in
the closet they can rattle out." If only the men in "Versace"
and "The Alienist" had followed the same precept, their lives would
have been so different.

Finally, a few films are streaming this month on Netflix
that you might want to see for the first time or again. Highly recommended: "Kill
Bill: Vol. 1 & 2," because who doesn't feel like Uma Thurman taking
off some heads right about now? "Terms of Endearment," because
Shirley MacLaine is our role model for how to advocate for the sick when her
daughter Debra Winger needs pain meds for her cancer. "Amelie," because
it's one of the most charming films ever made, and it's a template for how to
remain civil in these uncivil times.

"West Side Story" is also available this month.
One of the best musicals ever made, this version of Shakespeare's "Romeo
and Juliet" is as heartbreakingly realistic in its depiction of racism and
the conflict between one set of immigrants and another as it was in 1961 when
it premiered. Plus, "WSS" is inherently gay, with its beautiful and
haunting score by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, as well as the
Oscar-winning performance of the great George Chakiris, whose gayness kept him
from more and better roles despite that Oscar. The inimitable Rita Moreno sets
fire to the screen and even the why-did-they-cast-a-Russian-as-a-Puerto-Rican
winsome Natalie Wood is charmingly sweet and, in many respects, perfectly cast.
There's talk of a remake, but that rooftop scene with Chakiris and Moreno
singing and dancing to "America" is perfection and will never be
bested. Watching Patti LuPone perform "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina"
at the Grammys, we were reminded of how the first often remains the best. We
still get chills thinking about it.

Last but not least, because we need superheroes so badly
right now, "Wonder Woman" is also available this month.

So for the knee-jerk jingoism that is always just below the
surface when watching the Olympics, the heartbreaking depictions of the
killings of gay men and boys, and the usual Sturm und Drang in Washington, you
know you really must stay tuned.